Screenplay

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Jack (Simon Pegg) is a writer. Or, he was. He wrote a popular children's
book about a sensitive hedgehog named Harold. He blames that book for
ruining his marriage. When "A Fantastic Fear of Everything" opens, Jack
is currently working on a project called "Decades of Death", a study of
Victorian-era serial killers, the "Golden Age of murder". He cannot
leave his flat in Hackney. He sleeps clutching a knife. Jack is afraid
of everything, of being murdered, of launderettes, of eyeballs, of
Christmas carolers, of the telephone ringing, and every other casual
thing that comes up in life.

"A Fantastic Fear of Everything", directed by Crispian Mills (with
animation sequences directed by Chris Hopewell), is a fascinating and
uneven horror-comedy, strange and ambitious, anchored by a tour de force
performance by Simon Pegg. Pegg, obviously, is well-known to fans of
Edgar Wright's films, as well as his appearances in blockbuster
franchises like "Mission: Impossible" and "Star Trek", but here, he is
basically given a one-man show. He is in every scene, clad in filthy
underpants and an open silk robe. He is a phenomenal physical actor.
Watching him work is the primary pleasure of "A Fantastic Fear of
Everything." Similar to "Barton Fink," another hallucinogenic story of a
writer haunted by his own unfinished projects and lost opportunities,
"A Fantastic Fear of Everything" examines the creative process as seen
through the eyes of a writer gone completely mad.

Jack is a wreck when the film opens, and his condition deteriorates from
there. Fleeing from shadows in his own gloomy flat, it is hard to
believe that Jack was ever together enough to have had any success as a
writer, let alone be someone's husband. "A Fantastic Fear" is best when
it explores what it is like inside a paranoid mind, a man so bewildered
by the simple tasks of life ("I've never bought a toilet roll!" he cries
in a panic to his agent) that he cannot leave his house.

The first half of the film features Jack gearing up for a lunch with his
agent (deliciously played by Clare Higgins), and then the fallout from
that meeting, where she tells him a producer from Hollywood is
interested in his "Decades of Death" project. All he needs to do, the
only thing, is put on a suit and meet the guy for dinner. But once he is
back in his flat, the hallucinations take over again, and he becomes
convinced that the Hollywood guy is somehow related to one of the grisly
Victorian murderers on his wall. At any rate, the situation goes south,
and his panic is exacerbated by the fact that he does not own a suit,
his socks are filthy, and he is afraid of going to the laundromat. Mills
and the production design team pull out all the stops in the first
half, filming Pegg in a distorted and fantastical way, so that never
once are we outside his delusional viewpoint. Shadows loom around Jack
and cloaked figures seem to float at the end of the dark hallway. Six
innocent Christmas carolers on the stoop are filmed as though they are
portents of evil doom. As awful as the situation is for Jack, Pegg is so
funny and so committed to the performance that the psychotic break
becomes hugely entertaining.

"A Fantastic Fear of Everything" goes off the rails in its second half,
when Jack ventures out to wash his socks, shirt, and underpants at a
laundromat. He is so frightened that the fellow customers at the
laundromat stare at him with what seems to be hostile intent. The
situation, which starts out humorously (made even more so by the fact
that Jack has accidentally Super-glued his huge knife to his hand),
drags on so long it becomes actually interminable. It is as though once
Jack leaves his flat, so rich with psychodrama horror-movie potential,
"A Fantastic Fear of Everything" doesn't know what film it wants to be
anymore. There are still some very funny moments, and the script is
often hilarious. Only Simon Pegg could make the screamed comment "This
is a CELLAR" funnier with every repetition.

As the film galumphs awkwardly towards its ending, with flashes of
visual brilliance like intermittent lightning, events start to dovetail,
and there are scenes with a Freudian psychiatrist (wearing an eyepatch
and a pirate's hat), and a pretty girl who shows up at the laundromat
(Amara Karan, well-known for her performance as Rita, or "Sweet Lime",
in Wes Anderson's "The Darjeeling Limited"), as well as an actual serial killer on the loose who just wants to be loved because
he was abandoned as a child. The film is too cynical to play any of this
sentimentally: the "wounded inner child" sub-plot is obviously supposed
to be snarky and ironic, and it is. But the film is haunted by its
superior first half.

"A Fantastic Fear of Everything" is not, actually, fantastic, but it was
inventive enough to hold my interest, weird enough to be intriguing,
and bold in some of its visual experiments. At the center of it all is
Simon Pegg; terrified and manic, talking to himself, racing around in
stained Fruit of the Looms, kitchen knife glued to his hand. It is a
compelling and comedic portrait of creativity, obsession, and psychosis.

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